


Coming Home

by roadtripexpert



Category: The Miseducation of Cameron Post - Emily M. Danforth
Genre: Family Issues, Found Family, Non-Linear Narrative, Panic Attacks, Past Trauma/Shared Trauma, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, They live together on the road and love each other like family I'm sorry I don't make the rules, coming home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2019-06-10 07:38:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15286872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roadtripexpert/pseuds/roadtripexpert
Summary: Cameron turns eighteen, and a promise she made to two of her closest friends is kept.





	1. Chapter 1

Cameron turned eighteen after Adam. So really, they were all waiting for her. He had called her on his birthday and told her to just hurry up and age, laughing, but she could feel the truth behind his words. They missed each other. Jane, of course, was the most impatient, she had planned the whole thing years in advance, holed up where ever she was with her “old flame”. She gave them an address.

Eighteen felt like freedom. And it also felt like a beginning, even as she wandered towards the inevitable.

___

           

She had spent the last year and a half with Lindsey in Portland, having regular friends-with-benefits sex and catching up. Lindsey was cautious around her at first, until Cam burst out with: _“They didn’t brainwash me, God, and it’s certainly not going to rub off on you!”_ She had been cautious on the phone as well. She was the first person Cam called when they got to Mona’s. She had known something was up when Ruth intercepted all her calls, but had no idea what it was. She listened calmly as Cam explained to her over the phone where she had been, and then, also calmly, said “ _What the fuck?”_ and told Cam that she needed to come to Portland right then, immediately.  

She paid for Cam’s ticket back to Montana, although she didn’t understand why she had to go.

 _“I made a promise to some friends,”_ was the only explanation Cam was willing to give her. Somehow talking about Adam and Jane in any more detail was off-limits. They were sacred.

 

___

 

Montana still felt like home. She realized maybe it always would. There was too much of her family history here, too much of her own history. Footprints in the mud.

She shouldered her bag and paid for a bus ticket.

 

___

 

The second person she called was Margot. That one involved a lot more tears than she had expected. Margot was in Vancouver, enjoying what seemed to be a very nice evening when Cam called. She was excited at first, asking Cam if she had gotten the girl scouts manual and the money.

Cam started crying. Then Margot was concerned, so concerned she offered to call Cam’s aunt, which snapped her right out of it. _“Don’t.”_ And her voice was dead-serious.

She felt small, telling Margot about God’s Promise over the phone. She was still a child. But Margot listened, and at the end of it she was silent.

_“I didn’t think…I know your aunt, and I didn’t think she would do something like that to you. I’m so sorry Cam. What can I do to help?”_

Cam gave her Mona’s P.O. box address and hung up, with a _“thank you.”_ Adam put a hand around her shoulder and Mona said something from the kitchen where she was making baked ziti. Something about _“you kids.”_ And all Cam could think of was a mantra: We’re safe. We’re safe. We’re safe.

 

___

 

Jane was camped out in a grungy motel off the interstate that Cam had to treck a couple extra miles from the bus stop to get to. She knocked on the door.

And suddenly it was Jane, a year older, beaming at her as she snapped a picture, then buried Cam in a bear-hug.

_“Missed you.”_

The room had two beds and smelled like pot, which made Cam laugh and grab Jane’s hand and spin her, because she was still _“one glorious bastard.”_ Which made Jane laugh until they were in fits on the grimy floor.

That’s how Adam found them.

 

___

 

Saying goodbye was one of the hardest things Cam had ever done, even if it wasn’t for long. It was hardest to say goodbye to Adam. She was worried about him, where he would go. He told her not to as he buried her face in his neck.

They had kissed one last time the night before. Something like sorrow and be-back-soon. She missed him as soon as he walked out the door. A deep ache in her gut.

 

___

 

The two girls tackled him as soon as he walked in the door. He looked good, maybe a bit too skinny, but good. Cam looked him up and down and cried happy tears.

They sat on the gross beige carpet and smoked the quality pot Jane had gotten from her “old flame” and it felt a little too much like old times to be real. Cam rested her head on Adam’s shoulder and Jane took pictures even though the lighting was shitty.

They talked about everything and nothing, about where they had been and what they had done. Anything but what would happen next. They deserved that. They deserved to not know, to wonder, to hope. They wondered what happened to all the other disciples.

It was midnight when they decided to turn in. And then there was the trouble with two beds. First Adam said he would sleep on the couch, then Jane said she would. Eventually Jane won that argument and settled down on the couch, Cam and Adam in the two beds. A few minutes passed, and the air felt thick and awkward.

Cam heard Adam get up from the other bed and moved over when he patted the sheets next to her, humming out a hello as he he settled in behind her. Then Jane got up, and Cam was worried for a moment because she didn’t have her prosthetic on. But she reached the bed and crammed herself on the other side of Cam. And it felt right.

Like the beginning of their new life together.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An anniversary sneaks up on Cam and she makes the trip to another kind of home.

Cam couldn’t breath. That wasn’t exactly true. She could, probably. She was holding her breath, that was it.

Adam was driving them in a shitty rental Volvo he had bought with an equally shitty job he had held for the year they weren’t together. And they were on their way to the next motel and she couldn’t breath. She couldn’t…And they were suddenly stopped and suddenly looking at her with concerned eyes and Jane was reaching from the backseat to squeeze her shoulder and she _just needed to breathe_.

She knew if she did she would cry. She had forgotten. She had forgotten this day and what it meant, and she knew if she inhaled it would all come crashing into her. Because she was free. She was eighteen and too close to her old home and she would be standing at a payphone on the side of the road asking to talk to her grandmother. She knew. 

Somewhere she could hear her friends asking her what was wrong and if she was okay. And somewhere she heard herself answer them.

 

___

 

She still hadn’t cried yet. That made sense. She hadn’t cried on this day for a long time. She was lying on the rusty colored quilt of another motel bed, Adam behind her, rubbing soothing patterns on the nape of her neck. Jane was getting groceries and Cam was looking at the phone and the Bible on the bed side table and wondering if calling her old life back into this new world was worth it. 

 Adam made a noise of surprise as she shifted, reaching for the phone. She dialed the number. She waited. And maybe this was breathing, the moments between events, the seconds before a decision is irreversible.

She doesn’t let her Aunt speak. _“I want to talk to my grandmother.”_ The thickness in her voice surprises her, like she hasn’t spoken a word in the last week. She lets Ruth flounder a bit more before saying it again, more insistent. _“I want to talk to my grandmother.”_

 

___

 

Maybe it was the proximity. They were in Montana, dangerously close to what used to be her home. And maybe that was just gravity. Spiraling closer to the weighty events in her life. Circling and circling. Her grandmother didn’t seem to understand why she ran away. She didn’t understand why she would want to. But her grandmother hadn’t put her there. Cam didn’t resent her as much as she probably should, but she had always been more family than Ruth could ever be. She had been there in the sticky summers of her youth with ice and hay lofts and old movies. Linoleum kitchen tiles and bare feet. Raspberry oatmeal and floral nightgowns.

And the last words she had said to Cam on the phone haunted her. _“Come home.”_  

Cam wanted to scream _“I already am home. I made it. It’s mine.”_ But she knew they would sound false to her grandmother who hadn’t seen her in more than a year. They would sound like tinfoil words. Collapsing.

 

___

 

They went to Mona’s apartment first, and to Cam it was like dipping her toes in the water. Close, close, but not quite submerged. She wondered if she’ll ever get rid of the weight on her chest when she thought about her home town.

 Mona tossed her a package as soon as they settled in on her ratty college-student couch.

_"From that friend you called in Vancouver.”_

_“Oh,”_ she said and opened it. There was a card on nice stationary with a note to the three of them. She read it and rummaged for the contents of the box. Three brand new flip phones.

 _“Holy_ shit _Cam.”_ Jane said and immediately riffled through the box for the note. She read it. “ _For_ us?”

Cam nodded slowly. Mona shrugged.

 

___

 

They slept in sleeping bags, which reminded Cam of their first few days out on the road, buying supplies with what little money they had, hitchhiking from one RV park to the next.

They slept in sleeping bags but Cam didn’t sleep at all, just listened to Adam and Jane breathing and wondered what they thought of this pilgrimage.      

They couldn't go back. But neither could she, not entirely. She wondered if they resented her for trying.

 

___

 

They went to the beach when they first arrived in Miles City. The beach where she and Irene drank root beers on the sand all those years ago. Where only a few years had passed since she and Mona hid below the docks and made out. Both felt like centuries ago.

There were families there, but no one recognized her. They grabbed towels from the life-guard shack and lay on the sand and talked. They got a couple strange glances, which made Cam realize she was a stranger in her own home. An outsider among outsiders.          

Somehow that didn’t matter. Somehow all that mattered was that Jane and Adam were happy, in the sun, drinking in the newness. They had accepted this small part of her and for that she was grateful.        

They spent the day there, pretending to be any other group of teens stopping by for a beach day. Pretending Cam didn’t have to grapple with her family later that day.

 

___

 

She opened the door and her aunt was there. Ruth. Family, whatever that word meant. Ruth looked so much older and so much frailer and Cam tried so hard not to let it touch her, the pity in her gut when she looked at this woman, but it came anyway. 

Ruth didn’t say anything, just stood with tears in her eyes and brushed back her hair to where Lindsey had shaved the side of it off. It was growing in rough, but Cam had never cared about that sort of thing. Ruth apparently did, because she started crying. Cam turned her head away.

 _“I’m not here to stay. My friends are camped out in our car and were leaving in a few days.”_ She wasn’t looking at her aunt, she was looking at the side of the door frame. She didn’t realize that she knew the exact pattern of wear on this house until she saw it again. And Ruth was talking again, so she slid passed her and into the house. Keep moving and none of it will touch you.          

Then she saw her grandmother. Her grandmother in their stuffy living room that always smelled like dust and too much perfume. Her grandmother so much more wrinkled than she remembered.

 _“Cameron,”_ was all her grandmother said, and Cam was in tears.

 

___

 

Later they were sitting on the couch and not saying much, watching a meaningless show on the TV, and Ruth was still just standing in the doorway ringing her hands, all the power gone out of her.   

 _“I didn’t want to come back,”_ Cam finally said. There in some truth to that, some falsehood. It was for her parents, not for her. It was for her grandmother, not for her. It was—

 _“I know,”_ said her grandmother, and patted her on the knee.          

And the thing was, Cam didn’t feel trapped like she thought she would. She felt more free in this house than she ever had.

 

___

 

Ruth cooked dinner and whisper-talked with Cam’s grandmother while Cam explored the upstairs again, moving through the house like one of its many ghosts.           

Her bedroom was just as she left it, which felt the strangest out of all of the strangeness, the whole house a tiny moment in time, like one of Jane’s photos.           

She didn’t take anything, just brushed the dust off, held it in her mind. There was nothing she could bring all of anyway, just bits and pieces. It felt silly now to base her life off of the things she found or bought or stole. Not silly at the time—but looking back on it. And not silly—it was like a crutch, or therapy.           

She left the room filled with haze and memories and walked down the stairs that still creaked and all this time she didn’t hear the knock on the door, or her Aunt answering it. She didn’t hear Ruth hurriedly talking to whoever was at the door. She didn’t hear anything until she was at the bottom of the stairs gazing passed her Aunt into the open doorway with an open mouth.         

She didn’t hear anything until perfect Coley Taylor with a bouquet of flowers and a ‘consolations’ card opened her mouth in a surprised whisper.          

 _“_ _Cameron?”_

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys i'm so sorry I didn't mean to hurt our girl like that. On the plus side the kids got a beach day.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moving on. Moving away. Moving forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the format and the feel/vibe of this piece is kinda running away from me, but here's some fluff and also some confrontation.

Ruth had dropped the plate of mac and cheese she had been holding when she opened the door. It shattered on the floor and Cam and Coley looked at each other. Cam couldn’t read her expression—something hopeful, something deep down and angry, something she’ll never get back. Maybe she was projecting, but there wasn’t much time too. Ruth was yelling _“no”_ and trying to shut the door on Coley. Cam let it happen. She was frozen. She had let herself back into her life and forgot about all the ghosts it would bring.

Coley opened her mouth to say something. The door shut.

Ruth collapsed against the wall and began sobbing.

Cam walked upstairs feeling half-asleep, like she had just witnessed a dream. She took out her phone and texted Jane and Adam.

_(where r u guys)_

_(need to talk)_

They sent her a very blurry picture of them at the abandoned hospital. Jane was pulling a face and Cam couldn't help but smile.

_(on my way)_

\---

 

They sat in the ruins of a hallway and smoked, which reminded her of her time there with Lindsey and Jamie drinking while the world went on outside. The feeling scared her.

She exhaled and said, _“Coley was at the house. Ruth slammed the door on her.”_

Jane sat up from where she had been reclined against a piece of broken drywall.

_"Wait. Pink stationary girl? She was here?”_

Cam only nodded.

_"Tell me where she is. I wanna’ fight her.”_

 Cam pushed Jane back to the ground with a laugh. _“You’re high.”_

 Jane was silent for a bit, then pointed an accusatory finger back at Cam. _“_ You’re _high.”_

 _"Ladies, ladies,”_ Adam reach out a consolatory hand, _“you can_ both _be high.”_

_"But seriously. Where is she so I can punch her.”_

_“Nobody’s punching anyone. I just…I don’t know, should I even talk to her. You know…closure?”_

Adam said _“yes”_ at the same time Jane said _“no”_. They looked at each other, then Jane turned back to Cam and shrugged. _“Whatever you need to do.”_

\---

 

She was sitting on the side of the sidewalk a half a block from Ruth’s house, holding the flowers like a shield against her chest. She saw Cam when she was a few yards away and looked at her with an unreadable expression.

 _“What are the flower’s for.”_ Cam thought maybe that was a light enough start. Coley did not, judging by the way her mouth twisted like the question was bitter in her mouth.

 _“Don’t be mad.”_ That stopped Cam in her tracks. She wanted to laugh. Mad. Yes, maybe that’s what she was. Mad.

_“I can’t promise that and you know it”_

Coley took a deep breath. _“I bring them every year. Around the time…the anniversary. I thought it was the least I could do for your Aunt.”_ ‘For you’ was implied, echoing in the back of Cam’s skull.

And for a moment all Cam felt was pure, white-hot, brutal anger.

_“Cam…I know—”_

_“No,”_ she snapped, _“you really don’t. What made you think that was okay, at all.”_

_“I’m sorry.”_

Cam looked over at Coley, suddenly small, just another person who made too many mistakes. A person with flaws and anger and hope. _“And I’m sorry, I’m just sorry about everything. It was fucked up of me. All of it.”_

 _“Yeah. It was.”_ Silence for another few beats. _“What do you want me to say, Coley, that I forgive you?”_

She shook her head, bit her bottom lip like she was trying not to cry.

Shit. Cam sighed and plopped down next to her on the curb, most of the anger dissipating from her like steam. She had gone away, she had grown up, been forced to grow up. Coley was still a kid who didn’t know who she was.

_“It’s gonna’ be okay, you know? It’s okay for me and I’m the one who got sent away.”_

_“It’s not fair.”_

They sat in semi-comfortable silence. It was nothing like the easy companionship of Jane and Adam, but it was something. Truce. Agreement. Finality.

Coley looked away from her, even though she was done crying and pushed the flowers into Cam’s arms.

“ _You’re going to leave again, aren’t you.”_

_“I don’t want to stay here.”_

_“Okay.”_

_“I’ll give Ruth your regards.”_ It came out less sarcastic than she meant it to be. Coley nodded weakly, a surrender, as Cam stood up and started walking away. And then she seemed to gain some of her courage back.

 _“We’ll see each other again.”_ It wasn’t a question, nor was it a command. Cam turned around with a surprised little smile on her face.

_“Yeah. I bet we will.”_

\---

 

She went back to Jane and Adam and spent the night in their car, sprawled in various uncomfortable positions. She had declined to stay with Ruth. It seemed like it could too easily be turned into a trap. She knew even thinking like that was messed up, but it was there all the same. They needed exits. The car was one of them.

When she woke up it was barely morning. Jane and Adam were still asleep, Jane, sprawled out in the back, coveting all the heavy, smoke-tinted blankets. Adam was passed out on the steering wheel, his mouth open and the imprint of the leather starting to show on his forehead. Cam stealthily took out her phone and snapped a picture, a blurry, pixelated Adam. Hair everywhere. Drooling.

The phone made a phenomenally loud noise, and Cam stifled a laugh as Adam woke up with a confused grunt, rubbing his face. He took one look at Cam, who was trying to put her phone away, and started trying to wrestle it out of her hands.

Somehow the commotion—which was lengthy and ended in Adam managing to delete the picture, and Cam ‘forgetting’ to tell him that she knew how to retrieve it from the trash—didn’t wake Jane up. And Cam and Adam ended up leaning on each other in peaceful silence.

 _“Thanks for coming here.”_ Cam said, without looking at him. Adam pulled away a little to look at her.

_“You know we’re always going to be here, for you, for each other. You know that, right?”_

Cam did know. She really did, but it wasn’t something they usually said out loud, not to each other. She smiled and leaned her head back into the hollow of Adam’s neck, laced their fingers together.

_“Yeah.”_

\---

 

Cam didn’t want to say goodbye. She wanted to leave without a glance back, put her ghosts to bed again.  

Ruth seemed to sense that. She was hovering nervously in her front-door, looking out as Cam organized the trunk and folded up the blankets, and Jane came back with two grocery bags filled with non-perishable food. She was fidgeting with her clothes when Cam went to get in the car, giving her one last look and a wave.

Ruth had other ideas. She started out of the house, then stopped when she reached the sidewalk, swayed.

 _“Wait,”_ Cam’s aunt, Ruth, the woman with the face of fear stood on the sidewalk in her flyaway hair and her slippers. Cam thought it was a wonder that she could hear her and stopped getting into the car—started waiting for her aunt to tell her why exactly she should stay.

Ruth didn’t seem to have a plan after that. Her mouth open and slack. Hinges going crazy.

 _“What…”_ she was composing herself _, “what do you…how are you going to live out there. Do you have any long-term plans? Any thoughts about the future?”_ She wasn’t even trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, clutching her sweater to her like it was freezing outside. And Cam wanted to be angry, she really did. But she couldn’t.

 _“I think our long term plans are not to be in a place that makes us hate who we are.”_ It came out like the dull end of a knife and she wondered if Ruth would see how much this hurt her too. She looked at Ruth’s face, crumpling like so much tissue paper, and resolved herself with a shrug.

_“We’ll work. We’ll make ends meet. We did it before, for a while at least. We’re a team. Family.”_

Ruth shook her head, she was crying again. _“I’m family.”_

Cam nodded. _“Yeah, you are.”_

_“Then why—”_

_“I can’t be here right now. I’m sorry.”_

_“At least let me know how to contact you.”_

Cam shook her head this time. _“I’ll come back. I promise. But it’s on my terms.”_

She could tell that Ruth was panicking, that she knew that she had lost the power in this relationship. _“Tell your grandmother goodbye.”_

_“I’m leaving.”_

Ruth put her hand to her face and looked away.

Cameron turned and headed to where Jane and Adam were waiting. Adam nodded at her and Jane hopped out of the car to sit with her in the backseat before kissing her on the top of the head.

_“You did good.”_

_“Yeah?”_ It came out fragile, unsure. Cam hated it.

_“Indubitably.”_

_“Okay,”_ Cam let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. _“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”_


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time speeds up. Life slows down. A glimpse into the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey I still don't really know what I'm doing with the format but I love these kids and I want them to have this beautiful life filled with other queer people and also nature. Also, thoughts on me doing a spin-off of Jane and Adam at God's Promise before Cam got there?

One Year Later

 

It was cold in Montana in the winter. They had exchanged their car for a beat-up camper with one bed and a pull-out couch which none of them used. (Margot had helped them cover the cost), but they still didn’t have heat or running water, at least when they were on the road, and they didn’t always have the money to pay for a spot at a campground.

It was the hardest year. The year when Cam thought that maybe she had made a mistake, that they were all still kids, all still vulnerable. Her grandmother died that winter and they made their way slowly back to Miles City in the snow and sleet. She didn’t talk to Ruth much, or Coley either, but Jamie hugged her like he was trying to keep her down.

There wasn’t a beach day. There was no smoking in the abandoned hospital.

She sat in bed, wrapped in blankets, shivering, crying, while Jane and Adam held her.

 

Two Years Later

 

Jane wanted to go to college. For art, preferably, but really, she just wanted to go. _“I just want to, you know, be normal, meet people, take classes and complain about work like we’re supposed to.”_

Adam, ever the one to plan ahead, found a small community college next to Glacier National Park where she could take all the classes she wanted for next to no money. The plan after that was for Adam and Cam to work in a supply store in the park, maybe even work their way up to being rangers and Jane could take the bus to school.

It was as good a plan as any. The future was a distant smudge on the horizon. They pulled into Glacier with enough money to pay rent for the fall and winter season.

Cam fell in love, instantly. The park was gorgeous, and quiet, and serene. Almost empty, but the people that were there opened their arms. She and Adam got jobs at first just volunteering around the park, with both of them making more money in a store outside the park. Margot (who had basically adopted the three of them, met them all a year ago at a restaurant she paid the bill at, Jane was instantly smitten) paid for the beginning of Jane’s degree.

The winter was still rough, but they weren’t on the move all the time. People would help them when they were low on gas for the heat.

The summer meant the park was understaffed, so Jane and Adam went through training and their lack of higher education was conveniently ignored. The uniform made Cam look _“very butch”_ according to Jane and Adam and she didn’t really mind. She liked the hat.

She liked knowing all the different corners of the park and she liked chatting with her co-workers about nothing at all, and how they didn’t care that Adam and Jane and her all lived together. They assumed things, sure, but they didn’t hold their own assumptions against Cam. Forest people, nature people, she decided, were the best, most nonjudgmental group ever to exist.

Jane agreed. When she was back at the end of classes, she would take pictures of the people and the animals. She loved the bears. She also loved how she could squirrel away little places just outside the park to grow ditch weed. Jane made friends with that weed, she made friends with her camera. She would sit on people’s porches when the only light was the bug-zapper and the evening stamped the heat out like it was a dimming fire, and smoke and talk about nothing and everything. Sometimes Cam or Adam would join her. Most times they wouldn’t. They all had things just for themselves.

They would go on hikes together on Adam and Cam’s off days. And Jane would bound off in front of them and come back even though she was the one with only one and a half legs. Sometimes it was just Adam and Cam, which was its own kind of special. They sat on lichen-covered rocks and looked out of he vastness of the sky. Cam snuggled into Adam’s shoulder and pointed, squinting, to a bird in the distance.

_"_ _Did you ever think this was going to be your life?”_

_“No.”_

_“Are you glad?”_

_“Are you?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“I am too.”_

Working at the park meant they could stay rent-free, and the lodge provided food also free-of charge. Jane had full meals at her campus, and suddenly they weren’t cold anymore, weren’t hungry anymore. Their life together was no longer going from motel to motel on the vast stretches of Montana highway. Their life was a quilt that Josie, an older parks ranger, had made for their bed. Their life was hikes on the weekends and warmth in the winter. Their life was hope and hot showers. Their life was safety. Their life was theirs. It was modest, and small, but it was theirs.  

 

Three Years Later

 

They heard about it from Mona, who heard it from someone else, and so on and so on. Jane called it _“the network”_ like every gay kid in Montana had some kind of root-pathway under the dirt. Adam said that sounded like gay kids were bio-luminescent mushrooms (he’d been taking ecology and biology and forestry courses that summer)

God’s Promise was being closed. Mona had been on the lookout for a while, apparently there had been a rather scathing report in some big-city newspaper about conversion therapy, and God’s Promise had been featured. Maybe it was in the Boston Globe? Cam couldn’t remember, but the point was that God’s Promise had been on thin ice for a number of years, and they were finally being shut down.

Cam didn’t really know what to feel. She couldn’t help thinking about Rick, and how he must be so hurt. She couldn’t muster up any pity for Lydia. Jane couldn’t seem to muster up any at all, because as soon as heard the news she was off to buy champagne at the cheap liquor store in town.

She sat on the couch with Adam and he smiled at her until she grinned back. Then they were laughing. Big, belly laughs. Because life finds ways to make things right, even if it’s way too late.

And that was how Jane found them.

 

\---

 

They decided now was as good a time for a road trip as any, it was the off-season, they told Marty, their supervisor, that it wouldn’t take them more than a week and a half. They planned on visiting what was left of God’s Promise, and then maybe stop at Mona’s for a while, peak into town if they really wanted to. Cam had promised Jamie she would be in contact.

It took them two days to get down to the site where God’s Promise used to be. They pulled into the parking lot to see that there was some kind of event going on. It was a small gathering and a speaker, and maybe a ribbon cutting? Cam couldn’t be sure. The three of them were perfectly content to put out lawn chairs on the asphalt and pop the champagne Jane had bought (which she had insisted they save) from a distance.

Some of the sparse crowd gathered around the podium turned curiously as they popped the booze and laughed as it spilled all over them. Adam gave a little salute, and laughed when they turned back, seemingly confused.

The building of God’s promise was still there, but the cross had been taken down, and the sign wasn’t there anymore. Jane seemed a little disappointed. Cam thought that maybe Jane had wanted to dance on the dust of the destroyed campus, that would be like her. She put her hand on Jane’s knee and nodded at her. Jane stopped looking off into the distance and smiled gently.

_“It’s gone. It doesn’t matter.”_

Jane nodded, then she put down her camera and stood up with her plastic champagne flute (also bought in town, at the dollar store) and raised it to the sky.

_“I propose a toast!”_ It was mostly for Adam and Cam, Cam could tell, but her voice carried across the parking lot. Heads turned. Adam and Cam giggled and raised their own glasses. _“To the end of fucked up religious self-hatred! To the end of being afraid, being quiet. To the end of hiding! To the end of God’s Promise!”_

Cam and Adam nodded along, letting Jane run her course, smiling at each other like idiots. Cam could see that there were those in the crowd who were nodding too.

_“To the end of God’s Promise,”_ Cam said, joined not only by Adam but, surprisingly, some of the crowd too.

_“And,”_ Jane said, with theatrics in every inch of her pose, _“to the massive amount of shitty weed all of us repressed idiots smoked.”_

_“To weed!”_ Cam raised her glass. Adam was rolling over in his chair with laughter, gasping, _“to weed.”_

 

\---

 

When the ceremony or whatever it was ended, Cam, Adam, and Jane were all sufficiently tipsy on bad champagne. The crowd seemed to disperse, but a couple from the group lingered. A younger-looking person with a jean jacket approached them. Jane waved as they came closer.

_“Hi,”_ their voice was timid and small. _“Did you guys…did you go to God’s Promise?”_

They all nodded.

_“I did too, right before it closed. I talked to the reporters.”_

Cam felt a twinge in her chest. The echo of her own, scared, small voice saying _“emotional abuse”_ to the people who were investigating all those years ago echoing in her head. She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t seem to. Jane put a hand on her shoulder.

_“That was really brave of you. I’m glad you made it out.”_

_“Yeah, I…my cousins took me in. It’s been really…it’s been good. And…didn’t you guys make it out too? That was like…all the other kids could talk about. Most of the one’s who had been there when it happened were gone but, we heard.”_

Adam, who got loud and giggly when he was even slightly drunk, nudged Cam.

_“Hear that? We’re the ghost story of God’s Promise?”_

_“Oh I think we’re more of an Urban Legend,”_ Jane said. Cam smiled, she smiled at this kid who got out, who was right in front of them and braver, so much braver.

_“What’s your name?”_

_“James. I choose it.”_

Adam leaned over. _“That’s a really nice name. Dude. We should totally meet up again, maybe try to connect to some of the other disciples?”_

_“Yeah!”_ They seemed thrilled. _“I’ll give you my number, but also, if you want to meet some other ‘disciples’, well you just saw them. Right now, it was a meeting of past disciples. We were celebrating the decision to make the building into learning center.”_

Cam felt the world expanding around her.


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then they come home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure how to give these three the ending they deserve. I hope I pulled it off.

What more is there to say? They grow old together. And with that comes arguments on front porches, in kitchens, over breakfast. And with that comes family and love. The good and the bad. What more is there to say? They are pillars of their community. They have people over for dinner. They buy a real house (small, modest, one big bed). Jane graduates, of course. They all fall in and out of love with a wide variety of people. Some of it sticks.

What more is there to say? They live life. Don’t they deserve that?

They sit on the porch on summer afternoons. Watch the purple sky turn indigo. Watch the storm roll in. Listen to the dusky wind blow over the tin roof. Don’t talk much.

What they have to say can’t be communicated in any language.

 _“It’s a good thing we found each other,”_ maybe Cam or maybe Adam would say, routine, loving.

 _“Indubitably,”_ Jane would say, and they would laugh because the phrase itself was coated in several layers of irony. Certainly. Always. Together. Road trips and funerals and hiking and living together in the home that they built in the park that they didn’t.

The lamp light is beckoning the bugs onto the porch and Adam or Jane or Cam says that maybe they should go in for the night and Adam or Jane or Cam says no, let’s stay out just a little longer. The lightning’s getting closer. The sunset a little more sweet.

They visit family. Chosen or otherwise. They visit graves. They visit lakes. They visit the ghosts of places that once had teeth. They find the stragglers and bring them into their life. They fall in love. Again. Again. Again.

What more is there for them to do? They live their live as they did on that first night of freedom. Taking pictures. Basking in the warmth of being known and being held and being whole. Together. Together after all of it.

And then the sun is low, and the bugs start to become a little too thick and the three of them pause one last time at the threshold as Adam or Cam or Jane holds the screen door, watching the last of the rain, the last of the red and orange. And then they come home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @stalepeachtea  
> I loved this book so much, and I imagine that these three spend the rest of their lives finding peace with each other and the world.  
> This is definitely going to be a series.


End file.
